More Then Meets The Eye

Transformers! From Comics, TV, film and other mediums have all tasted the glory that are the Transformers. Robotic aliens from the planet Cybertron here to destroy earthlings as the Decepticons or same them as the Autobots. Battles to protect the earth from evil! That is what stories are mad of. Good vs. evil is always a good story to watch, especially when it involves lots of giant explosions.

Leader of the Autobots, Optimus Prime, is a being of wisdom and power. Ready to fight for the greater good and even sacrifice himself for what he belives to be true. Nobility to its highest standards without the segregation usually brought on by such behavior. The Autobots let all into their ranks, without making even the smalest human look or feel insignifigent compared to themselves.

Leader of the Decepticons, Lord Megatron is the most evil creature in the galaxy with Starscreen as his second in command all the while destroying worlds trying to obtain power to destroy the Autobots. Uncaring and ready to destroy the most beautiful and irreplaceable things in order to obtain what they need.

The cartoons were always great years ago and the remakes keep up even today. The movie in 2007 and the new one soon. The Transformers can not be beaten in their subject. No "Gobot" could look at one of the Transformers without malfunctioning in their awesome.

Sleep & Dreams

Oh how we all sleep, or at least should, every night. A sleep cycle c comes to each of us, on average, every sixteen hours and upon that time we need a recharge. It is here, in our sleep, that we are the most vulnerable but it is also the time when we are the most free. Free to do, be, and act out anything we may otherwise not be able to in our daily lives. Free to live in a world of chocolate or fly without an airplane during a quietly violent thunder storm. Our dreams get filled with so many great and wonderful things but, the problem is, they are only dreams.

Some of us do not always, and sometimes not at all, have the greatest or nicest dreams but why? There are those who have nightmares or worse night terrors and can not have the dreams that they so desperately need. It is a sad fate for we, as humans, need our dreams. They provide with guidance and support for things we may not even realize were needed. The dreams we all have keep us sane!

There are ways to help encourage our dreams. One of the most popular and well known is called lucid dreaming. It is a state where you realize you are sleeping and then may have power to control the situation to your will. Lucid dreaming can be induced in many ways but the easiest is to have a form of constant external stimuli bombard one of your senses while you attempt to sleep. The most common and least obvious is music.

While listening to music in your sleep does not always actually induce a lucid dream, at times, it allows you to generally set the mood before you walk off to dreamland. Depending on the type of music, tempo and beat depends on how it effects the slumber world. Words to songs have a profound effect on the mind during sleep, as well, but it is harder to understand their effects. The tempo, beat and other things are obvious to the conscious mind on how they may or could effect the subconscious but with words, there is a problem as each word means more or less to each individual.

Another and more direct way to induce lucid dreaming is with visual stimuli. This can be done with certain types of glasses you can buy or make which, usually, shine a low intensity beam onto your eyelid as you sleep. It may be difficult to sleep like this, especially when listening to music is more natural, but the benefits are great. Once you are sleeping the light becomes a stable among the dreamer. They still see it even while they dream so this is a key trigger to yourself that you are indeed sleeping. Upon this time, most people actually wake. There are those that can deal with this knowledge and they manipulate their dreams to fulfill fantasies.

Dreams, sleep, dreaming: Things that make up a third of our life and so few actually enjoy them. There are even those that wish they did not dream and have no nightmares or night terrors that would make them worry. These people are clearly not aware of the power they wish to remove from themselves. Then again, perhaps they wish to have themselves go insane.

Note: Due to sleeping and dreams I almost did not post so I figured a post relevant as such would be appropriate and possibly funny.

Holes

Dig it uh oh oh,
Dig it
Dig it uh oh oh,(oh)
Dig it uh oh oh,
Dig it
Dig it uh oh oh (oh)

Originally this blog post was actually going to be about the fun you could have while digging a random hole. That changed awfully quick once I goggled the word "hole" like I do for all of my posts* and found/remembered a song which was sorta kinda relevant to the situation. Now there shall be talks about holes as a whole and the song. Both have their own amusement but one of the two does not require you, as a person, to move from your current spot to enjoy.

The song, which is from a movie based on a book with the same name of Holes, is about the experience a correctional youths had to endure. The book and movie Holes is mainly about Stanley Yelnats and his "adventure" to eventually fix his families curse. There is also some odd history wound into the story which, unless you have seen the film, would not make much sense to you if I explained anything.

Actually hole digging, however, was the original intention of this post. While I was searching the net for "info" on hole digging* I stumbled across something interesting. The story of a man and his hole. A link to the guy's "home page" can be found in my sidebar but I do suggest you remove any notions you WILL get from site and not place them on myself. His story is what I found interesting and something fun to share.

*Yes I actually do/did that and it is/was to find a link that might amuse and the attempt was very successful.

Evolution

Time is no friend to most things until you bring into the thought of evolution and adaption. Problem is there is not going to be any talks of such events in the reality of the world. Rather, Pokemon will be the choice topic and point givers.

"Evolve" is one of the key words in the games be they card or video. While I am sure many of you see a stigma toward the games as "childish" the core mechanics of the playable, mostly hand held, games are the draw. To catch, train and watch grow several creatures under your control is the basic instinct of man (the race) to "play god". We all love to have a being at our whim, especially a digital one that can be sacrificed for the greater of its team and still be resurrected later.

While you the trainer are in no direct harm there is an implied emotional bond which takes "damage" when all of your Pokemon are no longer conscience. Upon each one dropping to the ground in exhaustion you, the trainer, are forced to no longer life on. (Game Over).

Ideas of evolution are not held by the game itself but also the way it is portrayed. The hardware, graphics, sound all slowly evolved over the years to go from something basic and yet fun to a much more engaging, if not sometimes micromanaged. Starting with only 150 creatures and then slowly doubling and even tripling the number of possible "pocket monsters" to catch.

Solve Unamusement supports the Pokemon games and encourages others to play them and enjoy. However, the rest of the "francise" is the problem and what is causing stigmata among the average hume. While the cartoon is fine for young children and the card game holds its place for several years, the viodo games will hold their flavor and fun even for a thirty year old man with a grown family.

Current games for the Game Boy Advance and Nintendo DS can be found in most retailers but if you are savvy you may wish to try the VBA emulator for anything below the NDS. GBC and GBA games can both be played on the VBA so you could get the full experience you never took the time to have.

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Share Your Smilies

SHARE! SHARE! SHARE! Bring forth the yellow, the blue the happy and mean! They will always make you join in on their fun! Each has their own appeal to bring and each has its own personality to please or annoy you with! Please bring forth and add them to our world in odd and or funny places! Find them on a ball, in your food or perhaps make something new! How you spread the smile is of no consequence, just spread him wide for all to see! Even Mars knows how to share a smile so if its intergalactic, think of possibilities!

Now I say to you, again, "GO FORTH AND SHARE!"

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Who Needs Talent?

Depends on what you mean or imply by the words. Here at Solve Unamusement we like fun over anything else so sometimes talent is a bit over rated or over needed when just trying to have fun. If you have ever wanted to make some "real music" but were limited by some severe talent like issuse then do i have the musical instrument for you!

The Beamz is an "instrument" designed with the fun in mind. A very simple device to operate all you have to do is interup the laser beams and it sends an electronic signal to the software which returns a sound. The best part, as also possibly the worst, is how the program always makes the music in tune. The problem most people have with this is that you aren't really making any music so much just poking at something that makes the music for you. Then again, who cares? We're looking for something fun!

Fun is what The Beamz is, iindeed I only wish I had one. I've messed with one a little while back when it was being demoed in a store and I didn't want to let it go. Sadly the price, at the time, was pushing $600. Now you can get The Beamz from its website for $199 or like $250 after all the extra stuff like taxes and shipping is added on.

Small Warning: You may look like a total fool or even an idiot while playing The Beamz but you will have fun! Essentually what you are looking at is a very small laser organ that never misses a beat.

If it wasn't for the price tag, which has dropped, there would be a full recommendation for this thing. As things are now, however, I'd say put that $250 to something more useful if not less fun.

Extra Note: Blog News Update here and some of you may have missed it.

NEStopia

Emulating the NES and/or Famicon is something that a lot of "oldies" would love to do and a lot of you already do. The SNES is where I personally stated so not much is known about the system other then the fact that if it wasn't for the NES no other console and games would exist at all. This includes current systems and games. One of the most obvious is one of the "high profile" series that started on this system.

An RPG to literally end all RPGs was the idea behind Final Fantasy. Square, which was the devolper at the time, was going under along with the system it was trying to make games for. So as a "last ditch" they made a game with a literal meaning. This was going to be their last fantasy game, ever. However the game sold and sold and sold so much that demand for a sequal was high. The now very drawn out and over done FF (Final Fantasy) series is due to this one game.

Not to mention a lot of "game standards" started on the NES. The first person RPG, which I am not a direct fan of usually, had its root on PC gaming at the time but the NES, and later the SNES, seemed good fits for the genere. However the type of game is all but phased out in today's world with the, as far as I know, exception of the Elder Scrolls games and some copy-cats, though could be mistaken.

The emulator for the NES that I would suggest is NEStopia and it is the one that many people on a frequented site I visit for ROMs and emulation visit. The emulator works very similar to the VBA with only small exceptions with some small set up "problems". The source folders for save states, cheat codes and other things will have to be "redirected" after download if you do not place the game directly in the documents folder and move on. It is simple to do as NEStopia auto detects where the folders from the unzip (actually the one I found was a .rar file) are. Simply telling the emulator to select defaults will do the trick as most will not use these features anyway. Going into the options tab of the the Emulator it is best to select each item and select the defaults for the program.

Upon fixing these settings and a few others to default all you'll need are the ROMs. I downloaded an NES package of all known ROMs as I've never played a single game on the system so its best to just have the full thousand plus titles available for me. Some are not full games and only demos or prototypes but that is only about a hundred of the thousand so there are still plenty of games with a simple and small download.

Caution: Using emulators and having ROMs without owning the cartridges is technically illegal. Any ESA restricted titles that are obtained are illegal even with owning the cartridge.

Extra Note: Any system that has been deemed as "dead" or obsolete is usually not "watched" to close by authorities and most let infractions slide even on ESA titles but a caution is still needed.

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